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figured an attack would happen over the weekend to distract from the Comey book, it will be interesting to see how Russia's responds. we don't now what intelligence they have what has or has not been them to them. this could get very ugly very fast

This is a not "distraction" from anything, really. On April 4th, Trump announced that he was pulling American troops out of Syria. John McCain and others asserted that this "emboldened" al-Assad, Russia, Iran and Turkey, because then al-Assad usad used chemical weapons on April 7th, ultimately pulling us back in, again. To think that using chemical weapons to kill innocent people was somehow also part of a "distraction" plan is beyond silly, of course. Problem is, this President has so much shit going on, every actual really serious thing that comes up is going to prompt people to think it's some cooked-up bullshit distraction even when it's not.

Here's the thing, I don't necessarily buy the nk angle, but so much is confounding me here... for starters, and maybe I'm missing something super obvious, but WHY is Assad gassing kids? What is the strategic purpose behind telling the world "hey we have deadly gas weapons! And we're not afraid to use them! What are ya gonna do bout it?!"

Here's the thing, I don't necessarily buy the nk angle, but so much is confounding me here... for starters, and maybe I'm missing something super obvious, but WHY is Assad gassing kids? What is the strategic purpose behind telling the world "hey we have deadly gas weapons! And we're not afraid to use them! What are ya gonna do bout it?!"

”I started to tell him about the allegation was, that he had been involved with prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow in 2013 during a visit for the Miss Universe pageant and that the Russians had filmed the episode. And he interrupted very defensively, and started talking about, 'Do I look like a guy who needs hookers?'"

"It was almost an out-of-body experience for me. I was floating above myself, looking down, saying, 'You're sitting here briefing the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in Moscow.'"

"And then he says something that distracted me. He said, 'If there's even a 1% chance that my wife thinks that's true, that's terrible.' And I remember thinking, 'How could your wife think there's a 1% chance that you were with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow?'"

“I'm a flawed human being, but there is literally zero chance that my wife would think that was true. So what kind of marriage to what kind of man, does your wife think there's only a 99% chance you didn't do that?"

“I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don't know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It's possible, but I don't know

Okay, and then my 80-year-old mother, who was standing next to me watching this, shouts: “TRUMP IS R KELLY!!”

I don't want to sound like Chicken Little, but it seems a fair amount of California might be in a power outage. Southern California Edison and PG&E might be having issues. Ted Koppel was right.http://downdetector.com/status/pge/map/

Here's the thing, I don't necessarily buy the nk angle, but so much is confounding me here... for starters, and maybe I'm missing something super obvious, but WHY is Assad gassing kids? What is the strategic purpose behind telling the world "hey we have deadly gas weapons! And we're not afraid to use them! What are ya gonna do bout it?!"

It's a civil war, and the side opposing him are embedded amongst the civilian population. Attacking civilian areas and spreading terror demoralises or kills supporters and dissuades further support.

If you use gas, you don't have to rebuild the area when the conflict is over (remember it is his country), as you would if you had bombed it

It is pretty staggering that he would do this given the inevitable international reaction, but presumably Russia has said they will back them up

It is pretty staggering that he would do this given the inevitable international reaction, but presumably Russia has said they will back them up

This is what I'm talking about; the flagrantly "come at me" optics of this, especially considering our previous missile showcase deterrent apparently not being a big enough deterrent for Syria to really stop playing chicken in this regard. I get the "reasons" for this sort of thing, but I think taking this sort of atrocity at face value without wondering if there's some bait here is... I dunno, I'm not a conspiracy theorist AT ALL, but this feels like we're playing Rampage while Putin is playing chess (or Risk, if you want)

Trump’s speech last night addressed Russia, saying that Russia promised - in 2013 - to make sure that al-Assad would stop using chemical weapons; Trump then said that both Russia and Iran must think real hard about whether or not they want to be friends with al-Assad. So the question is if there was an organized INTENT for Assad to use those weapons, or if Assad is just a sole-actor (who kills and tortures his own people).

Also, to further what
@Sutekh
said, in addition to the remaining Assad opposition living among civilians, Assad thinks that a lot of remaining innocent civilian people are his enemies, too. He can’t tell the difference. And, as
@Sutekh
said, chemical weapons preserve infrastructure. To put it in perspective, he’s killed about 500,000 of his own people with conventional weapons.

This is REALLY complicated, watch 10 minutes of MSNBC today, re how MUCH shit is involved in Syria, geopolitically, strategically, etc.

Last night, the Pentagon says we specifically targeted chemical weapons and research facilities in Syria.

People are bitching that we don’t have a strategic plan; but it’s pretty hard to have one in some other country’s civil war. Right now, it’s a proxy war combined with a civil war.

Trump tweeted “Mission Accomplished” because the Pentagon’s specific mission last night was accomplished (and probably because the President’s speech last night was inartful and seemed to imply that we were going to continue bombing and fighting indefinitely).

But our current strategy re Syria appears to be the same as it has been all along: (a) moral (chemical weapons BAD) and (b) defeat ISIS.

Except that’s just stupid and awful? Democrats aren’t against handguns, or the 2nd Amendment, and Sanders has backed #2A AND gun manufacturers. That meme looks like it was created by Hannity.

Clinton LOST because she was too much of a hawk and Trump won because he wasn’t, and now the Trumpists are freaking out because Trump did this and went against everything he promised, the Democrats are freaking out saying he did this without Congressional approval, and the Republicans are saying he needs a strategy.

Im not against guns at all and most of my views are left. I dont care if you have a shotgun, a handgun, Knives or anything of that shit

I don't like people having Assult rifles because you don't need them in a civilized environment. You dont need one to hunt, you dont need one to take down a person, everything else can do that for you. The only place I ever want to see it is with is with a soldier. Other then that, you can do whatever you want with your guns. And this is someone who was born in raised in Portland, Oregon, one of the most liberal cities in the USA

And sharing a shitty meme to try and prove a point only makes you look like a shitty person

As someone who's almost 100% anti-war, I strongly agree that Dems are way too hawk-ish. It's incredibly depressing to me, and it's one of the primary reasons that I find it hard to get that fired up about any particular Dem candidate.

But holy shit, gun nuts don't have a foot to stand on in this argument. They've all got the blood of dead high school students on their hands just as much as war hawks have the blood of dead civilians on theirs. It's all the same thing: "these human beings are expendable for the sake of furthering my political cause."

As a Gent, I can't like a post that makes a personal slight like that.

But there's a salient point in there, I'd be interested to hear a refutation

Okay, here goes:

Let's say I posted a photo of a dead middle aged person, and next to it, a photo of you looking sad.
Then I posted a photo of a dead baby, and next to it, a photo of you laughing hysterically.

That's all this meme is. There's literally no context that links the images of the people to the images on the left. None at all. It wouldn't imply that you're some horrible dead-baby lover.

At one point in time, I'm willing to bet that virtually every elected official in Washington has voted or spoken in favor of some form of military action. To pretend that it's a partisan thing where Democrats are a bunch of people who want to nuke the world and Republicans are a bunch of hippies who would never do such a thing is so absurd that it barely merits a response.

Look at New York State: Gov. Cuomo signed so much gun control legislation that yards are littered with signs screaming "REPEAL THE SAFE ACT".
Now look at Bush and Cheney, starting a decade-long war over a bunch of bullshit fake intelligence. Funny though, I don't see them in the meme about politicians reacting to war...

In short: the meme is exclusionary and a false analogy. Here's how to make it have a valid point:
-Include both parties
-Match the photos to the actual events you're depicting (laughing at a press conference about bombing someplace, for example).

Otherwise, it's just another shitty meme that serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever except to make half of the population think that they hate the other half. I could make the same meme for Republicans in two minutes in Photoshop and Democrat-backing Facebook pages would fucking gobble it up. It is a poor hackjob of a partisan attack, and nothing more.

While we're at it: I admittedly have not fact checked this yet, but I vaguely remember seeing this when it came out last year and now it's recirculating. There's currently a screenshot from MSNBC going around from last year's Syrian strike. What does it show? When Obama wanted to strike in Syria following a chemical attack, Republicans almost universally said "hell no". Soon as a Republican president wanted to do it - for the exact same reason - overwhelming support. Interestingly, the Democratic response seems to be about the same regardless of which party has control. What's my point? It's not to say that one party seems more consistent than the other, because believe me, I'm aware that both sides are guilty of partisan BS. It's actually to point out that partisan politics is clearly alive and well when it comes to bombing people.

That was a lot of gymnastics but didn’t quite stick the landing. You really wanted to get the gun jabs in. It didn’t work. The bombing is stupid and meant to distract from the myriad of Orange Diaper Baby scandals including the one where he’s Putin’s bitch. It’s weird how none of these targets appear to matter much...almost like expensive lip service (unless there’s been some newer update I’m unaware of claiming any significant target damage).

That’s the thing I don’t get: I didn’t see one person here go “Oh YAY FUCK YAS WE BOMBED SYRIA! BEER FOR EVERYONE!!”

al-Assad poisoned people, and the Governor of Michigan poisoned a whole shitload of poor people and PERMANENTLY FUCKED UP A BUNCH OF KIDS in Flint, and nobody gives a shit, so yeah: preaching to the choir, but
@DigitalChaos
found a meme and couldn’t find anywhere else to put it so he dumped it here, because like we are all a bunch of right wing HAWKS or actually I think he gotta put down the bong because he’s acting like we be the DEEP STATE that Alex Jones be looking for.